The present invention relates to an improved vehicle display method and system for displaying stepwise the state of indication items of the vehicle stepwise.
In recent years, the development of display elements such as light-emmiting diode (LED), the liquid crystal display (LCD) and the fluorescent light display tube (FLT), as well as the peripheral electronic circuit elements, has contributed to the improved visibility and response of indication. A number of display elements, for example, LED, LDC, and FLT have recently replaced conventional mechanical indicators in order to indicate such properties of an input signal as voltage and frequency (hereinafter referred to as the input signal) at multiple points.
Such a new method of display is of digital type, and therefore when the input signal is located at a critical point between a given point of indication and the next point of indication, the variation in the result of measurement based on the method of measurement of the input signal (for instance, in a frequency measurement, a variation of .+-.1 bit may result in the measured frequency due to the phase difference between the input signal and the counter or gate output signal) or the variation of the input signal itself undesirably intermittently indicates the next higher or lower point with respect to the present point, resulting in so-called "twinkling or flickering" to the discomfort of the viewer. This tires the viewer's eyes, thus making the indication system undesirable for automobile.
One of the methods conceived for eliminating such flickering is an integration method in which, in the case of frequency measurement, the time of measurement is lengthened to improve the accuracy on the one hand and to average out the variations of the frequency of the input signal on the other hand. In the measurement of voltage, an integration circuit is generally used to average out the input variations. These integration methods are effective for eliminating the flickering. Nevertheless, since they degrade the indicator response to the change of the input signal, these integration methods cannot be employed for an indication system in which the response is important.